Difference Between Bathroom Tiles and Kitchen Tiles

There's no difference between a ceramic or porcelain kitchen tiles and a ceramic or porcelain bathroom tile, except for the style. It's that simple.

Many of our ranges have a floor tile and matching ceramic wall tiles, and it's obvious they've been aesthetically designed with bathrooms in mind. But the tile can be used in any room in your home, not just in a bathroom. And the same is true of "kitchen tiles". You can install them in the kitchen, bathroom, games-room, front hall, or the living room in a seaside holiday hom. 

The following 3 factors should be considered before making a purchase:

A busy kitchen will experience a lot more traffic than an upstairs bathroom. In addition, the bathroom floor may often be the recipient of bare feet and slippers, whereas a kitchen floor may receive shoes with grit embedded on the sole. For this reason, tiles selected for a kitchen floor often have have a higher resistance rating (known as a PEI Rating) than tiles selected for a bathroom floor. The PEI test gives a score from 0 to 5 for a glazed tile's abrasion resistance. The higher the rating is, the better the quality of the tile’s surface, and the more applications for which the tile can be used. We give a full description of the floor tile testing process here, and what the results mean.

If children are likely to splash water about a bathroom, and they or others might subsequently walk on the floor tiles in bare or stocking feet, there is a potential slip-hazard. For this reason, people often install grey porcelain floor tiles that have an anti-slip rating (known as an R-Rating) on their bathroom floor. The R-Rating score is assigned to a tile based on its slip resistance. The rating value is between 9 and 13, with the higher score reflecting better slip resistance. We detail out all the R-Ratings here, and what you need to know.

Bathroom floors are usually quite small, so it makes sense to use smaller tiles. Tiling with very large tiles would result in one full body tile in the middle, and every other tile cut to fit the contours of the room and to be shaped around the fittings. The bathroom is also a tight space, so it’s more convenient for the tiler if the tiles are small or mid-sized.

If the style of a particular tile takes your fancy, there’s nothing stopping you putting a tile with a high abrasion resistance in your bathroom; the cost difference will be negligible for such a small area. And likewise, feel free to put a slip-resistant tile in your kitchen if the colour, style, and surface feel are just what you want.

If children are likely to be flying around in stocking feet, or persons a little unsure of their footing are to be the main users of a floor, then an anti-slip tile is always a good idea. But as is obvious, this has nothing to do with the alleged difference between a kitchen tile and a bathroom tile, but rather the intended use.